Century of Lies, June 10, 2008

The failure of Drug War is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.
________________________

Dean Becker: Hello, my friends. Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. I am so very glad you’re with us. You know, I consider the whole of the drug war to be an absolute abysmal failure based in nothing more than hysteria and no where is that hysteria more glaring and obvious than it is in regards to medical marijuana. And today we’re going to hear the voices of many North American medical marijuana patients talking about the real need for medical marijuana.
________________________

Guest A: I’m a 45-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis and a host of other autoimmune issues that keep my body attacking and attacking itself and wearing me down. I was diagnosed in 1990 so it’s been 18 years, twenty that I can go back, a little over twenty that I can go back with symptoms on. At first I was hesitant to even go using cannabis but then at the time I had gone on disability, I had tremors, I had pain, I was uncomfortable all the time and yet the medications they were giving me were just putting me to sleep.

Just constantly, they’re downers, that’s all they are, muscle relaxants and benzodiazapans and what not. I finally went and said, ‘OK. I’ll try it,’ and I think it was immediate, my body just felt relaxed for the first time in, at that point in time, close to ten years. I mean where it actually just felt a chance to go ‘OK. I can handle this.’

The downers that they prescribe for MS symptoms are that, they’re downers. They put you to sleep, they make you so constipated you can’t go, you know, freely. There’s just all these side-effects that people don’t take into consideration. Being on these medications, and I’m on very low doses of them all, my body just can’t handle them.

Being on these medications, in low doses, I can get through. Without them, without the cannabis, I would probably have to up my medications, the prescriptions, amount which means I‘d be asleep probably 18 out of 24 hours a day. And that’s not living, I’m sorry, but that’s just not living.

Dean Becker: If you had the chance to talk to the drug czar or any of these presidential candidates about your situation what would you like to tell them?

Guest A: I would like to ask them why they continue to spend so much money on this drug war on a drug that is not near as dangerous, it has never killed anybody, it doesn’t have any interactions with any other drugs which, you know, some of the other drugs I take do.

I would like to know what they are going to do to stop the madness. It is not right to continue to prosecute people who are just using a little bit of marijuana. They’ve got to understand that it’s costing taxpayers so much more to process these people than to go ahead and just let it be.

Let people do what they’re going to do behind closed doors. And if it helps them without the pharmaceutical industry, which I’m not a fan of any more, there was a time when I thought they were great but now I just see nothing but ads on TV for drugs.

We’re a drug nation and yet the one drug that is really the most benign, in my opinion, I’m not a doctor, but I can tell you I’ve read enough about it that by eating or vaporizing it it’s not hurting your lungs which is the biggest argument. I think most of our presidential candidates have probably used drugs themselves. Stop the hypocrisy.
________________________

Adam Assenburg: This is Adam Assenburg and I’m a medical marijuana patient. I was a guard in ‘85. Broke nine vertebras in ’85. I’ve been on every medication known to man. And even on 500 mg of morphine a day and 60 mg of percocet I still go through over 35 pain convulsions where I leave the ground and black out from the pain.

I’m based in Colfax, Washington. I met this wonderful woman and her children over the internet and we fell in love, got together and everything, and the Anacortes Housing Authority in Washington State rejected my doctor’s statement and gave us an eviction notice.

And because of that my family and I were thrown to the street after a state judge said he would not honor Washington State I-692’s medical marijuana law even though my doctor testified that medical marijuana was the only thing left for me, that standard pills and practices have totally failed me.

I’ve tried as much as 600 mg of vicodin and that started to poison my system. I’ve tried the fentanyl patches, up to 500 mg of those, all that did was irritate my system. I’ve tried pain ‘cocktails’ that did nothing but cause me to continuously throw up. I’ve tried MS contin which I have been found to be allergic to, the generic of morphine.

I have tried everything known to man and because of being on this 500 mg of morphine, last winter it caused me to have acute diverticulitis thanks to drugs [unintelligible] out by the DEA and it’s caused me to loose a foot and a half of my bowel system and right now I’m facing the fact that 75% of my bowel and 75% of my digestive system has now shut down because of the morphine use.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, I decided to fight this all the way in court, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that as long as no criminal charges are brought up against me that I have no recourse against the government for them throwing us out of our home.

I have to be convicted of something, I have to criminal charges brought up against me, to where I can have any fight whatsoever. So I decided to take this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and as of just a few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to put this on their docket.

You know, there’s a lot of medical marijuana patients that have HIV, cancer and many other ailments and a lot of them have decided ‘Hey, it’s the federal government. How can we fight them?’ And, you know, as long as people are forced to think like that the government has won.

Once I ended up in Colefax, Washington, I decided to start fighting a lot and speaking up on Hempfest stages. I’ve been in the newspaper, on Channel 7 news, on Channel 2 news in Oregon. And then a lady down at KRFP by name of Selena had wanted to go ahead and do an article about me so every Saturday now, from 5 to 7 at night, I do my show called ‘Marijuana: Fact or Fiction’ at 92.5 FM.

And I love it because we have wonderful people on the show. A half hour before my show we have your Cultural Baggage on the show and then I go ahead and have fabulous guests on like Hillary Shelton from the NAACP.

I’ve had Jack Cole from LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. I’ve had the Reverend Eddy Lepp on my show. You know, in my case for instance, my mom died in 2004, Dean, from cancer and at that point in time my dad had been dead for several years and I decided after 18 convulsions in one day I’ve had enough of this suffering at the hands of the DEA and the federal government.

And I tried to take my life. I bled out, six units of blood. I bled three times when they tried to fix me back up and had a 20% chance of pulling through. This is what our government has forced me to do. And then I turn around and met this fabulous woman with the two children I told you about and everything was set in our life, I finally had some happiness in my life, and then, like I said, the government tried to take it all away by throwing us to the street.

All over the use of a drug that never kills anyone and has accepted medical use. Right now, Dean, we are fighting the Pullman Community Action Center and the Spokane Housing Authority we’re under that in Colefax right now because they’re basically trying to pull the same thing as the Anacortes Housing Project did and deny us a home.

They’re trying to say I’m using an illegal substance and I’ve tried explaining that under Title I of the Schedule Ruling, under Subsection B, it’s says that for it to be illegal it has to have no accepted use in treatment in the United States. Now I ask you: Do we not have four patients that get their medicine, medical marijuana, courtesy of the federal government?

Dean Becker: And of course we do.

Adam Assenburg: So, doesn’t it have accepted medical use in treatment or is the federal government poisoning those people?

Dean Becker: Well, they’ve given them some 200 pounds of marijuana each over the years. I’d like to think that they know what they’re doing.

Adam Assenburg: Well, I’d like to think that they know what they’re doing too and in twelve other states doctors seem to know what they’re doing too by giving it to patients over the use of pills. So I’d say it does have accepted use in treatment in the United States. That’s violating the meaning of the Schedule I ruling.

Dean Becker: Well, Adam, as I said, I’m very proud of the work you’re doing. Please point folks to your website so they can learn more about what you’re up to.

Adam Assenburg: Yeah. If anyone wants to catch up on my older shows you can find me at www.MarijuanaFactOrFiction.org. And, Dean, I thank you so much for your time.

________________________

Dean Becker: You are listening to Century of Lies on the Drug Truth Network and we’re tuning into the voices of numerous medical marijuana patients across North America.

________________________

Guest B: I am a 32-year-old female living in Texas:

Dean Becker: You have used medical marijuana and what do you use it for?

Guest B: Insomnia. It definitely helps me to sleep when I struggle with that. And it’s better than pills because there’s no nagging feeling the next morning. Anxiety, it definitely calms my heart rate and blood pressure and, like I said, weed doesn’t kill people. It keeps me from killing people. [laughter] Physically, I, wow, literally feel, when it comes to anxiety I’ll literally feel my heart rate just literally slow down.

It just, the relaxation is so intense it removes the emotion from a situation and you can better see it for the black and white, for what it is, you know. It is or it isn’t and you can or can’t change it. The emotions sometime crowd that and it calms me down and relaxes me.

Dean Becker: Mentally, does it make you feel drunk, woozy, what goes on?

Guest B: I wouldn’t say drunk or woozy, it’s definitely a, it’s a relaxation, total calmness, peace. It does, example, it can, it can enhance your mood, whatever mood you have before you smoke, or however you have it. It can enhance your mood.

You know, if I’m already tired at the end of the day then that’s how it helps me get to sleep. But if I smoke first thing in the morning it doesn’t put me to sleep because that’s not my mood first thing in the morning. There’s no after effects. If I take a sleeping, at least the sleeping pills I have taken in the past, they, in the morning there’s a groggy, there is a drunk feel. Not even a hung-over feel, literally a groggy drunk feel behind the pills.

Dean Becker: And has it led you to addiction? Using harder drugs?

Guest B: I don’t think so. I have tried other drugs but none of them, they wouldn’t, with age and time and experience you learn what you like and what you don’t like, and marijuana’s the only one that’s hung around. You know a drink every so often but that’s the only one that sticks with me.

Dean Becker: Agents of the government tour the country saying that marijuana leads to addiction, leads to harder drugs and that it’s so powerful now that it shouldn’t even be considered marijuana. What’s your response to that?

Guest B: [laughter] I don’t think they’ve rightfully done enough personal research. [laughter] I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with that at all. I mean, just using myself as an example, using people that I know as an example, I don’t hang around with anybody that does a lot of harder drugs.

Now, again like I said, I have tried things in the past but that doesn’t necessarily stem from marijuana usage. That stems from youth and experimentation and naiveté and peer pressure, there’s so many aspects that can go into choosing to try harder drugs you can’t just pinpoint it on marijuana like that.
________________________

Guest C: I’m located in Ottawa, Ontario, and I have a medical marijuana license from Health Canada. They gave me the license for Fibromyalgia specifically. Fibromyalgia is kind of a blanket diagnosis that they give to, you know, a litany of symptoms. Where I find that the use of cannabis, as often as every two or three hours, helps alleviate all the symptoms that I have to deal with.

Those include nausea, anxiety, muscle cramping, muscle spasms, inflammation in my joints, inflammation in my, I have irritable bowel syndrome as well which sort of goes along with the fibromyalgia. And I find that the use of cannabis alleviates all of these symptoms.

It doesn’t cure anything, it doesn’t make anything, sort of, completely go away but it makes the symptoms manageable and it does so without any of the nasty side effects that come with the pharmaceuticals that are normally prescribed for ailments of this kind.

Dean Becker: Now the mindset of the drug warriors in the U.S. and now, apparently, more so in Canada kind of parallels a statement by President Nixon about three decades ago, that ‘People drink alcohol to have fun but they use marijuana to get high.’ How does it affect you mentally? Does it incapacitate you?

Guest C: Quite the opposite in fact, actually. I find that the, you know, living with symptoms of pain and anxiety and nausea and confusion and grogginess that come with fibromyalgia, I find these are alleviated by the use of cannabis.

On more than one occasion I have been able to offset confusion or frustration or anxiety simply by ingesting some cannabis, either through a Volcano Vaporizer or smoking a joint or something along those lines.

I find it clears my thoughts, steadies my nerves a little bit, and also one thing is that it gets my anger down. Because of being an anti-prohibition warrior myself I find myself becoming frustrated and discombobulated by the frustration and anger I feel, so cannabis has an effect of enhancing my clear thinking, my compassion, my understanding of others, my empathy and my sympathy. And there’s also the spiritual aspects.

I find, like I’m not a religious person, I don’t believe in a deity as such, but I do believe that the entire universe, which you and I and everyone is inside, is a single sort of being, sentient in it’s design. And I also think that the use of cannabis helps bring me closer to the center of that, the center of the divine or whatever.

Not that it puts me in a heightened divine kind of ecstatic state, but it brings me closer to it. I feel more peaceful. I feel more spiritual. I feel more connected to the universe and to my fellow man.
________________________

WARNING: The government doesn’t want you to hear this ad.

Because they’re embarrassed. They funded research indicating marijuana doesn’t cause lung cancer and might even prevent cancer. Government research also found medical uses for marijuana and no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. The more research the government conducts, the more they undermine their own war on marijuana users.

Visit the Marijuana Policy Project Foundation at JoinMPP.org or call toll-free, 1-877-JOINMPP.

________________________

Erin Hildebrandt: My name is Erin Hildebrandt and I live in LaFayette, Oregon with my husband and five kids and I’m a legally registered Oregon medical marijuana patient. I use it for symptoms resulting from Crohn’s disease and migraines and I also use it for PTSD but that’s not a reason that we’re allowed to use medical marijuana here in Oregon under the law.

With migraines I’ve noticed a prophylactic effect. When I was back East I used to be in an emergency room two, three times a week sometimes, getting shots of demerol and even dilaudid on top of that when that didn’t work. But through cannabis daily throughout the years it’s been, wow, somewhere between five and eight years I think since I’ve had to go to an emergency room for migraines.

For the Crohn’s disease it helps with the nausea and vomiting, spasms, inflammation, cramps. I also, when I was back in Maryland, it was a real struggle to stay over a hundred pounds. And my doctor here diagnosed me with [unintelligible], which I guess is when people lose weight and they can’t gain up, and now it’s been almost two years I’ve been able to maintain a normal weight now that we’re in Oregon.

Dean Becker: What does it do for your mindset on, say, a daily basis. Does it intoxicate you?

Erin Hildebrandt: No. It really, it depends what you you mean by intoxicate I guess. I do notice euphoria, it definitely brightens my mood. [laughter] It helps tremendously with the PTSD symptoms as far as anxiety and sleeplessness. It reduces the flashbacks and the panic attacks and it kind of helps me focus.

Dean Becker: You referenced prior to using cannabis you were using dilaudid and other drugs. By what factor has it helped you to diminish use of these other drugs?

Erin Hildebrandt: Oh, goodness, I was just a guinea pig for a long time. I was even given experimental drugs and an experimental surgery, but I’m really, it’s pulling out the big guns if I have a Tylenol 3 now in addition to the cannabis for the pain. I really don’t use all those dangerous pharmaceuticals that I used to use.

Cannabis is just amazing and it’s this wonder holistic, herbal remedy and it treats all this variety of symptoms, even improving the mood, and a lot of people have been helped with sexual difficulties, a lot of couples. What more can you ask for in a medicine?
________________________

Dean Becker: You are listening to Century of Lies on the Drug Truth Network and Pacifica Radio and today we’re tuning in to numerous voices of medical marijuana patients across North America.
________________________

Guest D: I’m a sixty-year-old man living in Houston, Texas. I have been in a wheelchair for twenty-five years and have no legs. I’ve been using cannabis since 1992. A doctor at the V.A. Hospital recommended it to help me reduce the amount of drugs I was taking.

I was taking [uninelligible], I was taking Halcyon, I was taking Valium, I was taking Elavil--they had me on so many drugs it was pathetic. My cannabis use has reduced all of them. The only thing I take now is a half of a cholesterol pill and [unintelligible]. And that’s it.

Dean Becker: There are those in the federal government who say that marijuana becomes addicting. That it leads you to use these harder drugs. Have you found that to be valid?

Guest D: No. I’ve never leaned towards harder drugs. Marijuana does everything it needs to do for me. I’m trying to move out to California because I’m just so tired of trying to fight this every day. In California I can get a medical pass, permit to be able to have my own marijuana, grow it or buy it, whichever way would like to do it.

I was crushed by a car, a car fell on top of me. I broke my neck, back, legs, arms. My legs were in such bad shape that within seven years they both had to come off. I was taking a lot of pain medication at that time and now I take none.

I would like to tell everybody, you know, I think there’s what? Four or five people left in the Compassionate Use Act, you’re good enough to use it and it was good enough for them to be given it by out government. What’s wrong with me? How come I’m not as good as these people were? That’s what I want to know.
________________________

Christine Wahl: My name is Christine Wahl and I live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I have a license from Health Canada to use medical cannabis for, as medicine, and I mainly use it as an anti-convulsant for my epilepsy but I also have PTSD. I also have SIV, which is self inflicted violence.

I also have anxiety disorders. I also have eating disorders. I have a full gamut of things. I also have a compromised body system due to a bunch of anti-convulsant pharmaceuticals, which I’ve taken over several years, and that’s also caused problems and the cannabis actually helps alleviate some of those physical and neurological associated problems.

What happened, I started using anti-convulsants when I was in my early twenties. I think I was twenty or twenty-one when I first began pharmaceuticals. And within about two to three weeks of using the pharmaceuticals I would develop very heavy side effects from them and things got, for example my kidneys would start to malfunction, I was having thyroid problems where I’d have hot flashes throughout the day and night.

I also, I would have mood swing problems, I would have severe depression, I would start to feel suicidal--that usually happens within about three days of taking a pharmaceutical, I react very, very quickly, I’m very sensitive--by basically cleaning up my diet, I changed over to eating organic, eating a lot of vegetables, while I was using cannabis as my main anti-convulsant I found that I was able to diminish the majority of my seizures--I was having anywhere from 60 to 70 grand mal seizures a year--and I managed, over the course of about four years, dwindle it down to just five so far this year.

It’s very traumatic and very, very difficult having epilepsy. A lot of people think that just because I’m not falling down and having an actual seizure I don’t have anything wrong with me. And unfortunately that’s not the case so what happens is that I find by, by actually having control over my own health, I have my doctors, I have a chiropractor, I have my neurologist, I have all my gamut of specialists and they’re all very well aware of how I choose to medicate and treat my epilepsy and all of my medical conditions, no problem there.

When I smoke and use cannabis as medicine, we vaporize it actually, for the most part, what happens is that I find that spiritually I find that it is calming, I realize that the imminent death that I could possibly face from a seizure, I find that adjusting to that is much, much easier by also using cannabis.

I find that I feel more connected, I feel more one with everything when I use it. As far as alleviating medical symptoms it’s fantastic. It’s been a God-send in that way because my body was definitely compromised by all the pharmaceuticals that I had put through it.

I can honestly say that cannabis has improved the quality of my life, spiritually, physically, entirely I must say. It’s opened up my mind to many, many different things. And it’s been incredible whereas under pharmaceuticals you’re under this wash, under this haze, under this heavy type of sedation and you feel your emotions, your inner self, become inaccessible and that causes a separation in your actual self, in your brain, which also could possibly can lead towards other difficulties of dissociation and such and I find that by using cannabis it actually pulls me together on all levels and I become more solid, more one.

So all in all, if it weren’t for the cannabis I’d probably would have been dead a long time ago. I would have tried committing suicide a long, long time ago.

I find that so insulting, anybody who tells me that I’m using this recreationally. They have no idea what personal torture I go through and what my family goes through and my husband goes through.

And my friends... They have no idea and I don’t have very many people who come around either and visit because it’s so, such a heavy thing for them to deal with. I’ve had people run out of stores when I was working as a retail clerk, basically drop their baskets, just screaming, running out of the store when I was convulsing on the floor in front of the cash register.

And to actually have some semblance of being with it and on the ball, which is what cannabis does, it gives me the presence of mind, it slows down that erratic brain wave activity, it helps stabilize it some and then I can actually hold my thoughts together so to actually have cannabis and stay away from pharmaceuticals and have a healthy diet and try to have a healthy life style and as low a stress is almost next to impossible.

I feel so much healthier and I would rather live this way than be under a wash of pharmaceuticals.

Please, please have the courage to keep doing what you’re doing. Please let voices be heard. It’s very important and what you’re doing is so, so kind. Thank you very, very much.

________________________

Dean Becker: I hoped you’ve enjoyed today’s program. And I want to thank each and every one of these individuals for having the courage and the strength to speak their truths to power.

Prohibido istac evilesco.

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Dean Becker asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition.

The Century of Lies.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.

Transcript provided by Gee-Whiz Transcripts. Email: glenncg@zoominternet.net